Book Review: "Tony Kanellos (editor), Out of the Past: views of the Adelaide Botanic Gardens - a Series of Edwardian Era Postcards"

The extended title for this splendid visual feast is a catalogue to accompany the exhibition Postcards from the Edge of the City at the Santos Museum ofE conomic Botany, 9 December 2014 to 26 April 2015. As a catalogue this book contains the from and back sides of 300 postcards published between 1900 and 1917...

Healing gardens in the Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital: Reflections on benefits, preferences and design from bench diaries

Background Interest in the use of healing gardens in healthcare settings to provide therapeutic benefits is increasing, however insight is needed to determine whether patients, patient families and friends, and staff who spend time in these gardens use these in the manner for which they were designed, and experience the benefits suggested by broader research in this field. Objective(s) Visitors to four of the LCCH gardens have left comments in ‘bench diaries’ (visitors books). Analysis of these comments yields valuable insights into the use of the gardens, enabling reflection on the design intent and outcomes and guidance regarding how the gardens might be better utilised, as well as a basis for further investigation into the use and value of the gardens. Method(s) Comments have been coded and analysed using a thematic analysis approach to identify patterns relating to the reasons for which people appear to come to the healing gardens; benefits they appear to receive from spending time there; and features and aspects of the gardens that they appear to appreciate in particular. Only comments related to the gardens have been used in this analysis, with all comments being deidentified. Outcome/Conclusion Comments left in the Adventure Garden and Secret Garden bench diaries were used for the analysis, as Staff Garden and Babies Garden bench diary comments did not relate to the garden. There were no negative comments relating to the gardens, other than one comment requesting additional benches. The vast majority of comments expressed gratitude for the space. The four most frequently observed themes from the comments left in the Secret Garden Bench Diary indicated that they were seeking ‘time out’ from their experiences of being at the hospital, a desire for a ‘dose of nature’ (greenery, beautiful garden, etc), and fresh air, and that the garden space provided a restorative experience to them in some manner. Comments in the Adventure Garden Bench Diary related predominately to the view. Analysis of the comments emphasises the importance of gardens providing multi-sensory experiences that significantly differentiate the space from the hospital ward and provide visitors with a sense of being away, of peacefulness, and of familiarity with the outside world. Positioning gardens with prospect, and solar aspect, appears important in these regards, as does the presence of visible greenery. Adequate seating in locations that provide pleasing views appears particularly important for staff and adult visitors. Whilst comments in the Bench Diaries did not indicate direct awareness of the stress and anxiety-reducing effects that research elsewhere has found from viewing plants and nature, however these effects may underpin many of these experiences that visitors did share.

Concerning the house museum and the picturesque landscape in the work of Sir John Soane : with raw hints for post-heritage museum space

The picturesque aesthetic in the work of Sir John Soane, architect and collector, resonates in the major work of his very personal practice – the development of his house museum, now the Soane Museum in Lincoln’s Inn Fields in London. Soane was actively involved with the debates, practices and proponents of picturesque and classical practices in architecture and landscape and his lectures reveal these influences in the making of The Soane, which was built to contain and present diverse collections of classical and contemporary art and architecture alongside scavenged curiosities. The Soane Museum has been described as a picturesque landscape, where a pictorial style, together with a carefully defined itinerary, has resulted in the ‘apotheosis of the Picturesque interior’. Soane also experimented with making mock ruinscapes within gardens, which led him to construct faux architectures alluding to archaeological practices based upon the ruin and the fragment. These ideas framed the making of interior landscapes expressed through spatial juxtapositions of room and corridor furnished with the collected object that characterise The Soane Museum. This paper is a personal journey through the Museum which describes and then reviews aspects of Soane’s work in the context of contemporary theories on ‘new’ museology. It describes the underpinning picturesque practices that Soane employed to exceed the boundaries between interior and exterior landscapes and the collection. It then applies particular picturesque principles drawn from visiting The Soane to a speculative project for a house/landscape museum for the Oratunga historic property in outback South Australia, where the often, normalising effects of conservation practices are reviewed using minimal architectural intervention through a celebration of ruinous states.

MiLK: Transforming everyday places into dynamic learning spaces with mobile and web technologies

This paper explores how game authoring tools can teach processes that transform everyday places into engaging learning spaces. It discusses the motivation inherent in playing games and creating games for others, and how this stimulates an iterative process of creation and reflection and evokes a natural desire to engage in learning. The use of MiLK at the Adelaide Botanic Gardens is offered as a case in point. MiLK is an authoring tool that allows students and teachers to create and share SMS games for mobile phones. A group of South Australian high school students used MiLK to play a game, create their own games and play each other’s games during a day at the gardens. This paper details the learning processes involved in these activities and how the students, without prompting, reflected on their learning, conducted peer assessment, and engaged in a two-way discussion with their teacher about new technologies and their implications for learning. The paper concludes with a discussion of the needs and requirements of 21st century learners and how MiLK can support constructivist and connectivist teaching methods that engage learners and will produce an appropriately skilled future workforce.

Birrarung Marr

Melbourne's new riverside park, Birrarung Marr is located on the north bank of the Yarra, meeting Federation Square at its western end. In design terms it is an important one for both Melbourne and its city centre. It is the first new park in the inner-ring of the city to be built in a hundred years, since Alexandria Gardens, and is also the first major park done by COM since the influential period of designed capital works under the leadership of Rob Adams, at City Projects.

The response to dryness in Australia

The drought Australia now faces is leading to shifts in the perception of the continent, of Australians and the world. The ideals of lush green landscapes are making way for landscape designs in which dryness is a quality of the design. On a map of the world, Australia is enormous, and seems empty because development is concentrated around its edges. Its heart must be red, in the cultural projections of the world from images of Uluru, 'the rock', set in a flat desert with no relief. Of course the country is not really all desert - surely? - with low shrubs pretty much throughout. Inhabitation seems to cling to the edges where teh continent feels microclimatic effects from the adjacent oceans and edging mountain ranges, which screen the population from the real state of the environment - dry, harsh, amazing and unique. Australia is rightly proud of this harsh difference from its edges, but prefers the harshness to be 'out there'. At the moment however, the country is pretty much universally in drought, and the contrast between green and brown, that it has celebrated, even built its identity around, is disappearing to become brown throughout. Without the browning of Australia, some areas, such as tropical Queensland, are having their designed public landscapes and gardens revealed as an elaborate mythology, a landscape fraud.

Determining heavy vehicle suspension health from vibratory wheel loads

A low-cost test bed was made from a modified heavy vehicle (HV) brake tester. By rotating a test HV’s wheel on an eccentric roller, a known vibration was imparted to the wheel under test. A control case for dampers in good condition was compared with two test cases of ineffective shock absorbers. Measurement of the forces at the bearings of the roller provided an indication of the HV wheel-forces. Where the level of serviceability of the shock absorbers varied, differences in wheel load provided a quality indicator corresponding to a change of damper characteristic. Conclusions regarding the levels of damper maintenance beyond which HV suspensions cause road damage and dynamic wheel forces at the threshold of tyre wear at which HV shock absorbers are normally replaced are presented.

Living walls - a way to green the built environment

Actions Towards Sustainable Outcomes Environmental Issues/Principal Impacts The increasing urbanisation of cities brings with it several detrimental consequences, such as: • Significant energy use for heating and cooling many more buildings has led to urban heat islands and increased greenhouse gas emissions. • Increased amount of hard surfaces, which not only contributes to higher temperatures in cities, but also to increased stormwater runoff. • Degraded air quality and noise. • Health and general well-being of people is frequently compromised, by inadequate indoor air quality. • Reduced urban biodiversity. Basic Strategies In many design situations, boundaries and constraints limit the application of cutting EDGe actions. In these circumstances, designers should at least consider the following: • Living walls are an emerging technology, and many Australian examples function more as internal feature walls. However,as understanding of the benefits and construction of living walls develops this technology could be part of an exterior facade that enhances a building’s thermal performance. • Living walls should be designed to function with an irrigation system using non-potable water. Cutting EDGe Strategies • Living walls can be part of a design strategy that effectively improves the thermal performance of a building, thereby contributing to lower energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. • Including living walls in the initial stages of design would provide greater flexibility to the design, especially of the facade, structural supports, mechanical ventilation and watering systems, thus lowering costs. • Designing a building with an early understanding of living walls can greatly reduce maintenance costs. • Including plant species and planting media that would be able to remove air impurities could contribute to improved indoor air quality, workplace productivity and well-being. Synergies and References • Living walls are a key research topic at the Centre for Subtropical Design, Queensland University of Technology: http://www.subtropicaldesign.bee.qut.edu.au • BEDP Environment Design Guide: DES 53: Roof and Facade Gardens • BEDP Environment Design Guide: GEN 4: Positive Development – Designing for Net Positive Impacts (see green scaffolding and green space frame walls). • Green Roofs Australia: www.greenroofs.wordpress.com • Green Roofs for Healthy Cities USA: www.greenroofs.org

Foldback current control for a DG to achieve Fast Arc Extinction in a distribution network

The distribution network reliability can be increased if distributed generators (DGs) are allowed to operate in both grid-connected and islanded operations when the network has a high DG penetration level. However, the current utility regulations do not allow for the islanded operation. The arc faults are the one of the major issues preventing the islanded operation, since the arc will not extinguish if the DGs are not disconnected. In this paper, the effect of a converter interfaced DG on an arc fault is investigated by considering different control strategies for the converter. The foldback current control characteristic is proposed to a converter interfaced DG to achieve quick arc extinction and self-restoration without disconnecting the DG in the event of an arc fault. The results are validated through PSCAD/EMTDC simulations.

Prevalence and occurrence of zoonotic bacterial pathogens in surface waters determined by quantitative PCR

The prevalence and concentrations of Campylobacter jejuni, Salmonella spp. and enterohaemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC) were investigated in surface waters in Brisbane, Australia using quantitative PCR (qPCR) based methodologies. Water samples were collected from Brisbane City Botanic Gardens (CBG) Pond, and two urban tidal creeks (i.e., Oxley Creek and Blunder Creek). Of the 32 water samples collected, 8 (25%), 1 (3%), 9 (28%), 14 (44%), and 15 (47%) were positive for C. jejuni mapA, Salmonella invA, EHEC O157 LPS, EHEC VT1, and EHEC VT2 genes, respectively. The presence/absence of the potential pathogens did not correlate with either E. coli or enterococci concentrations as determined by binary logistic regression. In conclusion, the high prevalence, and concentrations of potential zoonotic pathogens along with the concentrations of one or more fecal indicators in surface water samples indicate a poor level of microbial quality of surface water, and could represent a significant health risk to users. The results from the current study would provide valuable information to the water quality managers in terms of minimizing the risk from pathogens in surface waters.

Evaluating the Java Virtual Machine as a Target for Languages Other Than Java

The portability and runtime safety of programs which are executed on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) makes the JVM an attractive target for compilers of languages other than Java. Unfortunately, the JVM was designed with language Java in mind, and lacks many of the primitives required for a straighforward implementation of other languages. Here, we discuss how the JVM may be used to implement other object-oriented languages. As a practical example of the possibilities, we report on a comprehensive case study. The open source Gardens Point Component Pascal compiler compiles the entire Component Pascal language, a dialect of Oberon-2, to JVM bytecodes. This compiler achieves runtime efficiencies which are comparable to native-code implementations of procedural languages.

Implementing languages other than Java on the Java Virtual Machine

The portability and runtime safety of programs which are executed on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) makes the JVM an attractive target for compilers of languages other than Java. Unfortunately, the JVM was designed with language Java in mind, and lacks many of the primitives required for a straight forward implementation of other languages. Here, we discuss how the JVM may be used to implement other object oriented languages. As a practical example of the possibilities, we report on a comprehensive case study. The open source Gardens Point Component Pascal compiler compiles the entire Component Pascal language, a dialect of Oberon 2, to JVM bytecodes. This compiler achieves runtime efficiencies which are comparable to native code implementations of procedural languages.

Leveraging managed frameworks from modular languages

Managed execution frameworks, such as the.NET Common Language Runtime or the Java Virtual Machine, provide a rich environment for the creation of application programs. These execution environments are ideally suited for languages that depend on type-safety and the declarative control of feature access. Furthermore, such frameworks typically provide a rich collection of library primitives specialized for almost every domain of application programming. Thus, when a new language is implemented on one of these frameworks it becomes necessary to provide some kind of mapping from the new language to the libraries of the framework. The design of such mappings is challenging since the type-system of the new language may not span the domain exposed in the library application programming interfaces (APIs). The nature of these design considerations was clarified in the implementation of the Gardens Point Component Pascal (gpcp) compiler. In this paper we describe the issues, and the solutions that we settled on in this case. The problems that were solved have a wider applicability than just our example, since they arise whenever any similar language is hosted in such an environment.

Milk : students building mobile learning games in everyday places

This paper explores how mobile games can transform everyday places into dynamic learning spaces filled with information and inspiration. It discusses the motivation inherent in playing games and creating games for others, and how this stimulates an iterative process of creation and reflection and evokes a natural desire to engage in learning. The use of MiLK at the Adelaide Botanic Gardens is offered as a case in point. MiLK is an authoring tool that allows students and teachers to create and share SMS games for mobile phones. A group of South Australian high school students used MiLK to play a game, create their own games and play each other’s games during a day at the gardens. This paper details the learning processes involved in these activities and how the students reflected on their learning, conducted peer assessment, and engaged in a two-way discussion with their teacher about new technologies and their implications for learning. The paper concludes with a discussion of the needs and requirements of 21st Century learners and how MiLK can support constructivist and connectivist teaching methods that engage learners and may produce an appropriately skilled future workforce.